The company won’t release the Guillermo del Toro sci-fi tentpole until July 12, 2013, but it’s already laying the groundwork for a sequel, tapping Travis Beacham to pen the script.

Beacham wrote the initial treatment for Pac Rim, as the project is affectionately known, as a spec script, which Legendary picked up in June 2010. Del Toro quickly became involved in its development and when his passion project At the Mountains of Madness fell apart, he made it his next picture. Warner Bros. will distribute.

Rim centers on a defense force consisting of mechas, giant robots and their human pilots, who are fighting to save humanity from gigantic monsters invading from an other-worldly dimension.

Sources say Del Toro will supervise the writing of the sequel script, although at this stage it’s unclear whether he will direct. The filmmaker yesterday committed to helming a haunted house story, Crimson Peak, which Legendary — wanting to stay in the del Toro business — picked up from Universal. A January 2014 production start is being eyed.

Starting to work on a sequel prior to the release of the original movie is becoming more common in an age when release dates often are set years in advance. Studios would prefer to wait until the first weekend’s opening grosses come in before throwing another installment into development, but in cases where test scores or buzz is high, it happens. Warner Bros., for example, famously started working on The Hangover: Part II two months before the first installment hit theaters. Legendary is clearly feeling bullish that it has a franchise on its hands with Pacific Rim.

Beacham broke into Hollywood with his 2005 spec A Killing on Carnival Row, which del Toro was at one time attached to direct (the project remains in development at Kopelson Entertainment). He also worked on 2010’s Clash of the Titans and wrote drafts of Black Hole for Joe Kosinski at Disney and penned the initial draft of Bad Robot’s top secret Zanbato project for J.J. Abrams.

Del Toro made sure to be clear that there’s nothing in the works regarding a crossover between Pacific Rim and Godzilla, but he loves the idea. However, he also talked about how the different artistic styles might not mesh if the two worlds ever collided:

Quote:

So far with the sequel, what we’re writing, what we’re creating, is very different, so there are no plans. Hypothetically, I would love the **** out of it. I would love to see a jaeger and Godzilla duke it out. That would be too much for the human brain. But I don’t think there are plans on that. I don’t even know what direction they’re taking Godzilla in. I know somewhat that it’s grounded differently. Pacific Rim, my aspiration was, the color, the saturation of color, was almost an acid-drip version of the Heavy Metal coloring that I loved when Richard Corben was working there, when [Jean-Claude] Forest was working there. Super bright, super saturated, the crazy color and aesthetic. And Godzilla is more realistic, somewhat. That’s my thinking. That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t even know which way they’re going.

Pacific Rim won’t hit theaters until July, but the hype reached fever pitch when an exclusive trailer played at WonderCon this past weekend. Furthermore, Legendary’s clearly happy with what they’ve seen thus far since they’ve commissioned a script for a sequel. Here’s what del Toro had to say about the status of Pacific Rim 2:

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We pitched a pretty good outline to Legendary several weeks ago, and they loved it, so Travis and I, as soon as we land this monster (no pun intended) into the screen, we will start actively working on the script. The outline was basically approved.

“We’re been talking about the idea for it and working on a pitch,” said Guillermo del Toro today about a Pacific Rim sequel. “And there will be a Mexican Jaeger,” he joked about the giant robots that fight the giant Kaiju monsters in the movie, out July 12. This isn’t the first time del Toro has floated a sequel to the upcoming monster adventure movie, but the director was more confident about where it would fit in the Legendary Pictures property’s trajectory. “Having had two to three years pass from the first Pacific Rim to the second movie, we can also prepare a good video game, continue the graphic novel and continue the mythology,” the director added. Del Toro wrote the script for the first Pacific Rim with Travis Beacham, who is writing the prequel graphic novel

As enthusiastic as del Toro was about another Pacific Rim movie at a media roundtable Tuesday, Legendary CEO Thomas Tull cautioned about getting too premature about sequel talk before the movie comes out. “We’d like to do it but it’s up to the audience — ultimately we’ll have to see how it does,” Tull said.

"Pacific Rim" is a rarity among this summer's blockbusters in that it's completely original, based solely on the imagination of its creators. But that also means that it has more work to do — especially if it's successful.

If it's a hit, audiences will likely demand a sequel. But given its monsters-versus-robots set-up, a follow-up doesn't sound too difficult to imagine. In fact, the film's co-writer and director Guillermo del Toro already has a few ideas for a follow-up, and when MTV News caught up with him, he detailed what exactly he has in mind.

"I'll tell you a couple of things. We will have Gipsy 2.0 for sure," del Toro told MTV News, referring to one of the many giant robots that fight monsters. "We will have Gipsy 2.0 for sure. Second thing is you're gonna see a merging of Kaiju and Jaeger. And that is quite special."

Following the adventures of human soldiers who pilot giant robots called jaegers to fight against undersea monsters called Kaiju, the film climaxes with an enormous showdown underwater as the last remaining robots fight to close a portal between our world and the one from which the monsters emerge. Del Toro said that if nothing else, this epic showdown produced a few promising ideas about how to further explore this larger-than-life world and push its mythology into new territory.

"Just think about it for a second," del Toro explained. "We sent Gipsy to the other side, right? It exploded, but whatever remains stays there." Referring to "drifting," the psychological process through which jaeger pilots team up with each other to maneuver their giant machines, he highlighted another plot point that might come into play in a sequel.

"We've drifted with a Kaiju brain," he observed ."Well, then start riffing on that and you'll get to something."

Shut up, don't tease me like that! That would literally be the most amazing thing i've ever seen.

__________________Beliefs - Christian. Anti-Republican. Anti-Gun. Complete separation of church and state. Freedom of speech. Freedom to practice any religion in public. Less focus on foreign lands and more focus on our own problems.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, despite its appearances, is neither a Transformers prequel nor a follow up to Hollywood’s countless Godzilla movies. But we can understand why you’d believe that Del Toro’s blockbuster belongs to the same family tree that created said franchises. In fact, one of my first thoughts after a recent Rim screening was, “How the hell is Gareth Edwards going to top this with his planned Godzilla reboot in 2014?”

Why beat ‘em when you can join ‘em? Adam Frazier, a writer for Geeks of Doom, shared an excellent idea after our Rim screening – combine the rebooted Godzilla series with Del Toro’s new Rim universe for an Avengers-style mash up of monsters and Mech heroes. Could it work? Frazier and I discuss in a lengthy and informative Rim dream scenario.